


Prisoners

by zeldadestry



Category: Supernatural
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 18:32:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/600841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeldadestry/pseuds/zeldadestry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A shrink, a priest, either, neither, he doesn’t know where to turn.  </p><p>“What are you?” he dares to ask, one night, when the voice won’t stop whispering, when he can’t stand it any longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prisoners

**Author's Note:**

> warning: possession, reference to canon death, suicide attempt

The first time he can identify, if he goes all the way back, if he’s looking for the signs, happens when he’s only a kid. His mom is visiting a friend, and he’s left to play in the backyard of her home with her beagle. He’s running, and the dog’s chasing after him, when a man’s voice says, “Having fun, Brady?”

Surprised by the interruption, he tumbles over his own feet and falls to the ground. He stands up, brushing dirt and dried grass from his jeans and, only then, does he raise his gaze to the stranger. His mouth falls open. He has three questions, who are you, how did you know my name, and the one he dares to voice: “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

The man laughs, closes his lids, shakes his head, and, when he opens them again, his eyes are normal, an ordinary brown. “Better?”

Brady nods. At his side, the dog is growling. “Hey, handsome,” his mother calls out from behind him. Brady turns, watches as his mother and her friend make their way towards the man. His mother’s friend kisses the man and Brady realizes this must be her husband.

Before he leaves with his mother, the man smiles at Brady and says, “Be seeing you, son.” 

  


After that, there’s a long gap, the best years of his life, when nothing happens to him that he can’t explain. By the end of that decade, he’s decided that what he saw that day must have been a trick of his imagination’s. 

  


When he’s sixteen, he starts sneaking out some nights to meet his friends. They drink and smoke up in one of the neighborhood parks, tell stories so embellished by bragging that they’re practically tall tales, and do all they can to win invitations home from their latest crush. But, no matter where or what the place is that he leaves behind by dawn, when Brady’s returning to his mother’s house, he can’t shake the possibility that he’s being followed. He gets that shiver at the back of his neck, when he’s walking alone, down deserted streets, the kind that makes him whirl around, though of course he finds no one there. Sometimes the chill hits him so many times that he’ll shout into the dark, not caring who he might startle or wake. “What the fuck do you want? Show yourself!” 

In the morning, especially when his hangover’s bad, it’s easy to convince himself it was all a big fat nothing that only seemed serious because he was wasted.

  


Brady doesn’t sleep well the summer between his freshman and sophomore years of college, which is weird, because insomnia’s never troubled him before. He has creepy dreams, including one where he’s bisecting his own torso with a carving knife.

His family’s home was built in the twenties and his mom always called the noises it made, as temperatures changed and the wood contracted and expanded, “settling”. He’s used to creaks and whines but now he notices a rustling, too, and sometimes even a sound like whispering, but in no language he recognizes. 

  


“Hey.”

“Sam, what’s up, dude, how’s your summer?”

“Alright. Busy.”

“Yeah, you kinda disappeared.”

“Sorry.”

There’s several beats of silence and then both of them say, “So, what’s up?”

Sam laughs. “You called me.”

“Yeah, a few weeks ago.”

“What? No, yesterday, it was on my missed call log. You must’ve called me, like, six times.”

“Yesterday? Hold on.” Brady quickly brings up his outgoing calls. That’s just weird. “Huh. Musta been drunker than I thought.”

“Good night, huh?”

“Great night,” Brady says, but he honestly can’t remember any of it.

  


“Mom?”

“Yeah, baby?” She’s sorting through a stack of papers at her desk and doesn’t look his way.

I think there’s something wrong with me. He could never say that to her. He knows she has done everything she can to make sure he is safe, protected. All she wants is for him to be happy, healthy. He must never let her know that he isn’t. She would believe that she’d failed but Brady knows, whatever this is, somehow it must be his own fault. He prays that it’s his fault because he knows the only chance he has to correct it is if he’s the one responsible. “I love you.”

“Aw, you’re such a mama’s boy,” the voice says.

She puts down the papers, slips off her reading glasses, and turns towards him. “Oh, sweetheart. I love you, too.”

  


A shrink, a priest, either, neither, he doesn’t know where to turn. 

“What are you?” he dares to ask, one night, when the voice won’t stop whispering, when he can’t stand it any longer. 

“You really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“Liar. Tell you anyway. I’m a demon, Brady.”

I am insane, Brady realizes, admitting it to himself for the first time. I have lost my mind.

“Oh, sweetheart!” The voice is laughing so hard it can barely get the words out. “Don’t you fucking wish!” 

  


Jess hosts a movie night for Halloween, a double feature of “The Shining” and “The Exorcist”. She’s scrawled REDRUM across the front door in lipstick.

Brady finds Sam in the kitchen, drink in hand. “That whiskey?”

“Yeah.”

“Not like you to hit the hard stuff.”

“Yeah, well.” Sam snorts down at his glass and then lifts his head to meet Brady’s eyes. “You know.” 

He told you, didn’t he? The demon asks. Yeah, not long after you guys met. Poor little Sammy Winchester, spilling his guts to you about how hard it is growing up without a mommy. Whine whine whine, cry cry cry, what a fucking weakling. Someday, Brady boy, you and I are gonna show him the error of his ways. He thinks life is hard with one death on his hands, just wait until we give him the pair. Blonde bookends. Nice.

What are you talking about? Brady thinks 

Like you don’t know. God, humans. You spend most of your lives lying to yourselves. 

“Sam,” Brady says, and the floor seems to wobble beneath him, like the demon’s shaking him somehow, from the inside, “do you think it’s possible, possession?”

Sam stares at him, forces a laugh. “Aw, the movie freaking you out?” he says, shoving at Brady’s shoulder. “Didn’t know you scared so easy.”

“Shut up,” Brady says, and means. “I’m out of here.”

“Dude, I was kidding.” Now Sam reaches his hand out again, but Brady knocks it away. “What is up with you?”

“Fuck off.” As he walks through the living room to the door, Jess follows. 

“You’re leaving already?” she says. 

He should lie, tell her he’s due somewhere else, that he’s meeting someone for a drink, or he’s got another party to visit. “I don’t feel so good.”

Her hand rests lightly on his shoulder, no demands in her eyes, only a question. Questions. She knew him before. She must wonder who he has become. “What’s wrong?”

“I have to leave.”

“Don’t go, come on. Sit down again. Let me get you a drink.”

He should pull away because that’s what he wants. He needs to get as much distance from her as possible but he can’t move. His joints are all attached to ropes, chains, and he controls none of them.

  


He can’t get drunk anymore, he can’t get high, but it’s more than enough, right now, just to sprawl back on the couch, his legs kicked up on the coffee table, Jess leaning against him with the giggles. His arm’s around her and she’s so warm and it’s too easy to pretend that he remembers the walk over here, that he knows how he came to sit here beside her, even though he doesn’t. “I dunno,” she murmurs. “I mean, I baked the brownies but I like them best with ice cream and we don’t have any ice cream and I’m too cozy- too lazy- which one? Both! To go and get any, so maybe we should make some cookies, too?”

He brushes her hair away from her face and she smiles up at him. “What kind of cookies?” 

“Chocolate chocolate chip, duh.” She pushes him away, gets up from the couch, and he follows her slow stroll back to the kitchen. “Gonna help?” she asks.

“Sure.” So he follows her orders, gets her everything she needs from the cabinets and the fridge. 

She opens the oven and slides the pan with the brownies out. “Cut these into squares, kay?”

“Sure.” He runs the side of his thumb up the edge of each knife in the drawer, eventually selecting not the largest, but the sharpest. 

  


There’s blood on his hands.

“We need to clean up,” the demon says.

“Whose-” his voice falters. “Whose is it?”

“Jessica’s.”

“Jessica who?”

“Don’t play dumb, Brady, you’re not very good at it.”

“Jessica Moore.”

“The one and only.” The demon laughs. “I bet she’s sorry she ever met you.” 

“Is she-”

“Please. Like I don’t know how to get the job done? I’ve committed more murders than you’ve taken dumps.” 

“You’re sick.”

“Because I killed her or because I talk shit? Get it? Talk shit?”

“Shut up.” 

He scrubs his hands raw. 

  


He’s standing in front of his junk drawer, the demon must have been looking through it for something, he has no idea what. He stares at his box cutter, the bright yellow of its handle. There’s nothing left to do now but protect everyone else he can, even if that means he must destroy himself. 

He grabs the tool and slices a long line up his vein with the blade.

  


He wakes up curled in his bed. The cut on his forearm is sewn shut.

“I’m never leaving you and while I’m still inside you, you can not die.”

“Why? Why won’t you go away?” 

“You have been useful, necessary, even, and you may be useful yet. You should be honored that you were chosen. You’re a small part of a great plan, believe that.”

“Why did it have to be me?” The sun’s rising, he can tell by the orange light across the floor, the walls. A new day, for so many people, a chance to do something different, do what they want, make their own choices.

“Selfish, aren’t you, wishing someone else would suffer instead of you?” 

He scrunches the muscles around his eyes in an effort not to cry. He doesn’t want it to know that it’s broken him.

“Hey, is it really so bad? Remember when you were eleven years old and still hadn’t lost the baby fat? You were so tired of the bullying, so sick of the teasing, and so lonely. Remember how you wished for a friend, someone who would stay by your side, no matter what? Well, my boy, that’s me. You asked for me and here I am.”

“I hate you.”

“I know, baby, but you’re stuck with me all the same.”

Brady presses a finger to the swollen wound, hisses at the pain. “I’ll try again.”

“Waste of time for both of us.”

But it’s all he has left, the only connection to the person he once dreamed of being, the twisted and grotesque remains of hope.


End file.
